Summary: Richard Stallman's suggestion for people who want to compromise on the issue of firmware
THE latest Debian GNU/Linux, like the previous version (6.x), comes without notorious firmware by default, which causes inconvenience to some, yours truly included. I discussed this with Stallman and here are his views on the matter. ⬆
At this point it would be rather foolish to assume that IBM will let Red Hat just "do its own thing" or maintain its corporate culture, identity, projects etc.